Treasures of the King: Psalms From The Life Of David

By Alec Motyer

This devotional book traces the course of David's life through his autobiographical Psalms: From triumphant boy hero to persecution in the court of Saul.

From gifted musician to compromised adulterer and murderer. From his exile on the run to his coronation as the leader of God's people.

The King's songs are a treasure-chest of jewels, telling not mere history but timeless truths about the King of Kings himself, David's magnificent God. With warmth and insight, the author draws out the lessons David learned in his turbulent life with the Lord and the rich gems he has bequeathed to followers of God today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP
• Release date: May 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781789740738

Alec Motyer

Alec Motyer (1924–2016) served as principal of Trinity Theological College in the United Kingdom, as well as pastor of several churches in England.

Book preview

Preface

These studies were first prepared for the 1988 Spring Session of the Wednesday morning Bible fellowship at Christ Church Westbourne, where I was then privileged to minister. The debt I owe to that Church cannot be measured. It is a delight to be reminded in any way of those halcyon days.

The thought that these Psalms studies might become a book was planted in my mind by my son Stephen, and I have enjoyed and profited by revisiting and writing up these old friends. The pleasure has been increased by the knowledge that I was working for the Inter-Varsity Press, and would receive the direction, advice and care for which that Press is deservedly a by-word. I would like to say a particular word of thanks to Mrs Kate Byrom, a Commissioning Editor of IVP, and, through her, to others at the Press to whom the production of this book owes so much.

May the God of all grace be pleased to use their work and mine to bring every reader to deeper enjoyment of his Holy Word!

Alec Motyer

Poynton, Cheshire

2007

Introduction

The poetry of the Hebrew Bible has nothing that compares with English ‘narrative verse’. When Lord Byron informed us that ‘the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold’, that’s all there was to it, an elegant record of fact, decked out in somewhat improbable imagery. The poets of the Old Testament, and David among them, showed no interest in such recording of facts. When they traced the course of history (e.g. Psalms 78, 105 and 106), it was in order to assert truth, to draw out meaning, and to apply lessons. It was poetry as prophecy, a forth-telling of the truth about God.

Take Psalm 78, for example. In two parts it traces the story of Israel: from Egypt to the wilderness (verses 12–39), and from the wilderness to the Promised Land (verses 40–72). It is full of facts, but the purpose is always to bring out what the facts mean, to use them to declare ‘the praises of the LORD’ (verse 4) and to make them into a lesson to be passed on from generation to generation (verses 5–6), in order to hold them to the highest ideals of spiritual devotion (verse 7 onwards).

There are fourteen psalms of David that their headings relate to incidents in his life (as, e.g., Psalm 51).* They do not record those incidents; indeed, for the most part, they do not make any plain reference to them. They are, in fact, David meditating on, and drawing out the lessons from, his experiences, telling the ‘story within the story’, the feelings behind the facts, the way faith came to the rescue, prayer was made and heard, and, above all, the glory of the Lord in power and mercy. They are David’s ‘real’ account* of his life story, his autobiography. They tell ‘what the LORD has done for my soul’ (Psalm 66:16).

It is perhaps worth mentioning that in the Hebrew text the psalm headings are not separated from the rest of the psalm, as has become the fashion in English versions. In our Bibles, the tiny print, and the way the headings are thus given a separate position, suggest that they are possibly optional extras. Indeed, it has even been known for them to be omitted altogether! Not so! We know of no Hebrew text from which they are missing, and when the text was divided up into verses, the headings were counted as the first verse(s) of the psalm in question.

If, therefore, we wish to deal straightforwardly with the sacred text as we have received it, the headings must be treated with equal seriousness. They are venerable and authoritative introductions to the psalms in question, and aids to our understanding of them. So this is what we are going to attempt.

For the most part, the psalm headings make a clear link with some recorded episode in the history of David as found in the books of Samuel and Kings (e.g. Psalms 3 and 59). Where the reference is unclear we must pursue the correct interpretation as best we can. Psalm 7 refers to an otherwise unknown incident, and, for example in Psalms 30 and 142, different settings are possible. It is also only right to point out that many interpreters would regard the headings as much later additions to the psalms, and with dubious (if any) value for understanding the psalms to which they are attached.

This attitude – and the principle on which it is based – do not appeal to me. Even if the headings could be proved to be ‘late’ (which cannot be done), we would still owe it to the ancient editors who put them there to assume that they did so intelligently and not in a moment of aberration! On the contrary, however, I find them perceptive and illuminating. I see no reason to suppose their presence is due to any other than David himself, and I invite you to join with me in enjoying the psalms in this light.

________

* Although the authorship of one or two of these psalms is debated – by others, not by me – for the purposes of this book they are taken to be psalms of David.

1     A tale of two kings: David and Saul

Background reading: 1 Samuel 9 – 11; 13; 15 – 17

Saul had almost everything going for him when he became Israel’s first king. He could not have been more confident of God’s call to him – not only the words of Samuel and the confirmatory signs, but (surely) some inward intimation of the work of God in his heart, the evidence of the casting of lots before God, and huge popular acclaim. In addition he was notably tall, something by no means negligible in a leader, and he knew intuitively when to hold his tongue, and when to do nothing. As his history develops we see how easily he attracted loyalty, so that it is not for nothing that he has been described as ‘the beloved leader’. The background to this ‘tale of two kings’ (see the Bible references above) will repay careful reading.

The tragic defect

But there was a worm in the bud. Saul was chronically insecure. Picture this oversized fellow hiding himself under the collected bags and parcels of the assembled people! And like all insecure people he could be astonishingly decisive, but, again like all the insecure, his powers of decision could also deteriorate into silly – even sinful – impulsiveness (see 1 Samuel 22:18–19). Likewise, his genuine devotion to the Lord (1 Samuel 28:3) could degenerate into absurd religious scruples (1 Samuel 14:24). Saddest of all, his insecurity became a persecution complex (1 Samuel 22:7–8), amounting to a mania – and eventually concentrated its fury on David.

The collapse of Saul’s kingship came in two stages, both of them failures to obey the Lord’s word. First, among the signs Samuel gave him in confirmation of his kingship, there was the command to wait at Gilgal for seven days till Samuel should come and offer the sacrifices and give Saul instructions. Like every word of the Lord, this was seriously meant, and no doubt Samuel gave it the same solemnity and emphasis that would have accompanied everything he said in the memorable interview. Saul should have understood it so – his behaviour in the event showed that he did so understand it. But he did not obey the command, and in consequence lost the privilege of founding a dynasty: there would be no ‘house of Saul’ reckoned among the kings of Israel (see 1 Samuel 13:7–14 for the full story).

‘To obey is better’

Chapter 15 of 1 Samuel records Saul’s second failure in obedience. He was commissioned to exact the Lord’s vengeance on the Amalekites,1 and because he failed to do so he lost his personal divine recognition as king. Thus he was doubly disowned: first, no heirs and successors on the throne; then, no true kingship at all. From now on it was downhill all the way. Saul’s potential was immense; his failure pitiable and tragic; the path from potential to failure was disobedience to the word of God.

Here comes David

The scene is set, therefore, for a tense conflict – of personalities, gifts and achievements – when David arrives on the scene. On the one hand, an insecure king doubly soured by failure; on the other, a youthful, assured and endlessly gifted aspirant.

With Saul’s second rejection, affirmed in 1 Samuel 16:1, the Lord took steps to secure the continuation of the monarchy outside Saul’s family, and the divine choice fell on the house of a Bethlehemite named Jesse. Between the lines of this famous story we can sense the growth of a police state. In a classic example of ‘shooting the messenger’, Samuel was by now persona non grata and had to watch his step. He needed a cover story to visit Bethlehem – and even so the arrival of such as he could have boded ill for the town, the elders fearing that they would be tarred with Samuel’s brush and put on the king’s blacklist – what we would call ‘guilt by association’.

David was Jesse’s eighth and youngest son, and was apparently somewhat looked down on by his own family because of his reputation for seeking repute by brash and foolhardy acts (e.g. 1 Samuel 17:28f.) – typical of the way in which a talented youngest son in a family of large men might feel he had to fight his own corner!

Musician and fighter

At any rate, David was the Lord’s chosen king, and, from the moment of his secret anointing, was filled with the Holy Spirit. But as the Spirit came upon David so he ‘departed from Saul’, to be replaced, judgmentally, by a manic spirit, which could only be soothed away by the therapy of David’s harp. Thus David became a member of Saul’s court, though not a permanent fixture, since 1 Samuel 17:15 literally says that ‘David was going and coming back from attendance on Saul to shepherd his father’s flock at Bethlehem’.

This is where we find him at the outbreak of the Philistine War.

The story of David’s scintillating victory over the giant Goliath – a man, incidentally, not all that much taller than Saul, who did not risk single combat – contains one strange feature. Saul had sent for David by name, and ‘loved him greatly’, yet, it would appear, in 17:55, seems not to know him! In one way we could explain this simply by recalling that the ‘great ones of the earth’ are not noted for recalling too much about the lower forms of life around them, and no doubt Saul’s illness would have increased the self-centredness that often goes with high office, and might explain his failure to keep up with the ‘who’s who’ of court life. This is a sensible and practical explanation, but not the true one. We need to note exactly what Saul asked Abner: not ‘Who is this lad?’ but ‘Whose son is he?’ That’s the point. The implication is that Saul had caught wind of Samuel’s visit to Bethlehem, and of the secret anointing. Was one of the elders a royalist ‘mole’? Very likely. Saul’s suspicions were suddenly roused about this bonny youthful champion. Somewhere in the depths of that poor, warped royal mind, was there a recollection that someone had once said ‘son of Jesse’?

The ‘marked man’

Now look forward to chapter 18:8, where David’s conquests in battle put Saul’s in the shade. We should not be surprised that Saul was jealous of the high praise heaped on David, compared with his own meagre plaudits (which, in fact, he hardly deserved – and he surely knew it); but what is surprising is that he saw David as a threat to himself and a potential replacement as king. Saul put two and two together to make an extremely troubling four, and ‘kept an eye on David from that day on’. David had become the marked man!

When we sense the ‘bitchy’ atmosphere that now pervaded Saul’s court, with courtiers ready to win in the rat race at any cost, the scene is set for the first of David’s autobiographical psalms.

_____________

Notes

1   Compare Exodus 17:8–16; Deuteronomy 25:17–19.

Psalm 7

2   A good conscience in a bad time

Background reading: 1 Samuel 18 – 19

After the Philistine War of 1 Samuel 17, David became more of a permanent fixture at Saul’s court, first as ‘master of the king’s music’ (18:10) and then as the (all-too-successful) commander of an anti-Philistine task force (18:30). But the king’s crazed suspicions quickly turned to enmity (18:9, 11, 29), and there were enough sycophants at court to make sure that the pot of royal hostility was kept well stirred.

The Bible leaves us in no doubt how serious sins of speech are. Isaiah knew that ‘unclean lips’ doomed him before the holy God (Isaiah 6:3–5). The tongue, says Psalm 34:12–13, is the key to the good life, and 1 Peter 3:10 endorses this. James 3:2 not only sees purity of speech as the mark of the perfect person, but, intriguingly, depicts the tongue as a sort of master switch on the switchboard of our lives: control the tongue and be able to ‘bridle the whole body’. Not only so, but words have a dreadful power to minister hurt to others. Proverbs 26:2 sees our words as like flying birds. They will ‘come home to roost’, as we say, though where nothing has been done to provoke the harsh words there is no reason to fear them. But the implication is that the tongue has real power to inflict harm.

This is the setting that the heading of Psalm 7 proposes. David felt himself to be under threat from ‘the words of Cush’. Typically of all the psalms whose headings refer to times or incidents, Psalm 7 contains no reference to Cush or to his hostile, malevolent words, but there were many occasions during Saul’s manic pursuit of David where yes-men would have been all too ready to stoke up the royal paranoia. King Saul was himself a Benjamite, and surrounded himself with Benjamites (1 Samuel 9:1; 22:7). It certainly cannot be far wrong to link the psalm with the early days of Saul’s hostility, when David’s increasing popularity cannot have pleased everybody either, and, without a doubt, the king’s ear would have been receptive of anything to David’s detriment.

Faith first . . . and second . . . and third

At all events, whether from Cush’s words or from Cush’s deeds, and whether in Saul’s court as described in 1 Samuel 18 or at some later time, David was under threat, in danger as from a rampaging lion, and bereft of human help (verse 2). The very fact that he does not particularize either about Cush himself (who is only mentioned here) or about what he said or did, means that his psalm deals with all such situations in principle. In a word, he offers us a recipe for the dark day, against any and every threat, and an antidote to a numbing sense of isolation.

(1) Faith affirms (verse 1a)

The great cry ‘O LORD my God’ is where the counter-attack against enmity, verbal assault and loneliness starts. It reflects David’s understanding of God, and it reveals how he met this new and threatening situation immediately by a renewed profession of faith. ‘LORD’ (with four capital letters) is the way most English versions represent the divine Name, Yahweh, in this way following the mistaken ancient scruple that the name was too holy for human lips. If the Lord says we may call him by his name – and that he wishes so to be called (Exodus 3:15) – why should we make a virtue of cutting off our nose to